


Dream of me, darling

by Snowy_Rain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Bad Puns, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Childhood Trauma, Complete, Have I mentioned I like the word “darling”, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mommy issues! mommy issues for everyone!, Mutual Pining, Psychological Horror, Researcher AU, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Slight lovecraftian, Suicide Attempt, Surreal, Temporary Character Death, This whole fic feels like a fever dream tbh....., Voldemort As Death, WAZZUP, Wordcount: 5.000-10.000, do not copy to another site, one for you! One for you too!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2020-09-24 06:49:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowy_Rain/pseuds/Snowy_Rain
Summary: Harry, sent by the Other Research Commitee, travels to the afterlife on orders to collect research ingredients.On the way back to the tangible realm, he falls in love.





	1. I saw you in the field of flowers

**Author's Note:**

> So.
> 
> I’m planning this to be three chapters long, but who knows? But this will be an, at most, 10k writing. Thank you!

“Well,” Harry sighs as he wraps up the last of the blooms. The packaging is distinctly human-made, classically brown and crinkling with a comprehensible sound - it doesn’t fit the flower’s aura, but afterlife’s vegetation had proven dangerous on Earth before. A covering is necessary. “I suppose my job’s done.”

  
  
  


He stands up from his crouched position, grunting at the ache in his joints. He should have taken that break when it was offered, before.

  
  
  


With the research materials collected, there was truly no more reason to overstay his welcome. Yes, the denizens of Death’s realm were a friendly bunch (more like a billion bunches) but even then a human’s body, unseparated from the immortal soul, was still too human for comfort.

  
  
  


He has to sigh again with resignation, yet nevertheless goes to pack his belongings. It had not taken that long to unpack, so Harry guesses he’ll be out of the souls’ hairs in an atomic spin or so.

  
  
  


So much for “treating the visiting living beings with hospitality and respect.”

  
  
  


The flowers shine orange in the midnight sky, the midnight soil. A cozy glow surrounds Harry as he traverses through the meadow. His backpack’s slung over his shoulder gracelessly, and he knows he smells rather distasteful to the dead folk here, not to mention his body is too material for the delicate fabric of afterlife - so he knows he does not fit the scenery at all. 

  
  
  


When Harry has first arrived, he had been nearly inconsolable from the clash of realities. The brain is not a tolerant organ at all, so it’s to be expected. It had been all he could do to try and reconcile the threads of darkness with the Earth’s sunshine. After a while, he had acclimated just fine and gone on to perform his duties, as requested by the Other Research Committee.

  
  
  


Harry stops to think if he did the right thing - accepting it and all - then Hermione’s chiding comes to his mind and he resolves to finish this, a shudder of unease going through him.

  
  
  


He goes on to walk back to the camping area, and the black hole starts rising in the sky. Cold sweat perspires on his back, and he fastens his steps. While praying he doesn’t get caught up in the vacuum, he comes across a path of-

  
  
  


It’s not anything he can explain. To his eyes, there’s nothing there. Yet there’s something, something he can only know when he glances with just enough casual regard, with the edges of his peripheral vision. It... leads him somewhere.

  
  
  


He wants to look.

  
  
  


Biting his lip, he stares at the sky again. Would he be too late if he went and came back? Who knows? It’s not like the flowers are urgent anyway.

  
  
  


He lets the backpack dangle down his back, tying the security belts, and ventures the road less traveled.

  
  
  


The road - or is it? It’s not a clear trail. Whatever. It leads to a smattering of ancient trees, then the world goes black, the darkness swallowed by the black hole. 

  
  
  


“Shit!” Harry shouts in surprise, but the sound doesn’t move past the radius of his body, absorbed into the blanket of nothing.

  
  
  


Nothing is a weird thing, by nature. It’s not black. It’s not white either. It feels like a dawn time, but it also feels like twilight. It feels as though it’s raining light, if that makes sense. It’s - well. Not important, he decides. The point is that everything disappears but then everything appears, back again.

  
  
  


The trees are dotted with wildflowers, orchids with the color of star-stuff. They light up the path he had been following, and he pauses in his escapade to reconsider.

  
  
  


Chastising himself for his stupidity, he hits his thick skull and mutters to himself, “Of course not, Harry. You went and did something wrong again, and this is the consequence. At least go face it like a decent person.”

  
  
  


He walks on.

  
  
  


The road of lit trees is no less worrying than the void in the sky, but who is he to judge? He hasn’t been here for long. So he goes on, until he finds a marble-paved track.

  
  
  


“The fuck,” escapes his mouth unbidden, then he clamps shut his lips. It’s late shame, so it’s no use, though he wishes inwardly for forgiveness in case anyone witnessed his words.

  
  
  


Continuing along the pavement, he, at last, reaches the end. 

  
  
  


It’s a high, cream-white pyramid, complete with numerous tiny stairs. Harry’s next decision is subconscious and he’s nearly four feet in when he realizes he’s never stopped moving. With a muttered “whatever,” he climbs up while he curses himself to hell and back. 

  
  
  


“Such a disgrace to your team, Potter - I’m sure you’ll get a big promotion once you’re back on the land of living, you pile of dead leaves,” he says during his tirade, and immediately winces because regular cursing is much more enticing at this moment. Yay for afterlife etiquette rules.

  
  
  


“Like a wilting, slimy worm; oh yeah, just like that. You’re as useful as that, you-“

  
  
  


He trails off as his eyes settle on the top terrace, he falls silent. 

  
  
  


On the pyramid’s summit, stands a figure in cloak. He raises his arms, and Harry realizes distantly it’s covered in the intangible matter, from the passage of trees. 

  
  
  


And the man - he soon notices from the sound - opens his mouth wide,  _ too wide and too inhuman, _ and there peeks no teeth nor fleshy inside nor anything at all; then he screams. Harry’s ears explode - he doesn’t hear anything, but blood leaks from the holes, and he vibrates at a level humans are not supposed to. The voice is water, soft and flowing and striking the crystal chords of unreality, in a symphony of amethyst lullabies that Harry can’t even  _ listen to _ , yet knows it as if it’s been sang to him all his life. His body isn’t supposed to handle such stress. How did he not break into his molecules?

  
  
  


Then he hears - the denizens of afterlife, the souls of the long departed, as they crawl on their hands and knees to the creature who screams a song. They clamor for the being’s attention, and he gives it to them with unique cruelty. With raw magic dripping from his fingers - the fingers that unravel, that shed the false flesh of humanity and leaves behind an invisible bone - he sticks his power into their hungry mouths, a twisted parody of a mother feeding her newborn offspring, and the souls scream back their own melodies, none as glamorous or brutal yet imitating the father spirit.

  
  
  


Blood springs from the creature’s wide mouth, and the tongue springs out with the steady stream, covered in red and wet and slick life - and Harry suddenly comes aware of who he has been spying on.

  
  
  


He scrambles down the blood-soaked stairs with a precise desperation only prey animals can copy, but is horrified to find the way back is swallowed by the black hole. It cackles at him and accompanies with a sound suspiciously close to the rumbling of an empty stomach. Harry climbs back up the red carpet of liquid, and turns back to the feeding of viscera.

  
  
  


Death throws up his precious organs, and like the ripened pickings of succulent fruits, forces it down their throats. It’s revolting in its crudeness, in the animalistic way the meat is ripped open and the marinated energy spills all over the feeding ground, bathing the pyramid just like the visible burgundy Death spewed up.

  
  
  


Harry somehow can’t look away at all, and feels a little bit of his mind escape him. Just a little. He’s only human, after all. He can’t be expected to leave afterlife intact.

  
  
  


And all through the disgusting mealtime, he mostly thinks,  _ I want to go home. _

  
  
  


Another, fewer but louder echo whines inwardly,  _ won’t you let me eat it too? _

  
  
  


Death’s lips, Death’s void of a mouth, Death’s starry, dirtied, devoured flesh - it all somehow condenses into the childish desire of  _ I-want-to-hold-his-hand-and-give-him-flowers _ , and isn’t that just plain embarrassing. Harry shakes his head, and looks around for a portal to pass through.

  
  
  


A rift has opened below the black hole’s remains, and he can hear the grating noise of human. He jumps into the comfortable, familiar black color; then he wakes up.

  
  
  


“Harry?” he somewhat hears Hermione. “The research material appeared in our lab just when you came into consciousness. Thank you.” 

  
  
  


Her grateful words are sincere. Harry sighs in exhaustion, and tries,  _ not-very-hard _ , to forget the realm of street-lamp flowers.


	2. But I spoke, “Love is stealing souls”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tom could not abhor nor delight in the sensation, so warped by his own machinations - but he struggled to hate it in his own right, without success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m rather pleased with this OvO This wasn’t the direction I wanted this to go in, but I like reading it all the same <3
> 
> Thank you everyone! Even your silent support (kudos, hits and such - even a stray thought) fills me with so much warmth! I’ve been struggling so much with my contest entry, focusing on this helped some :D
> 
> And without further ado...

Death prepares a bouquet.

He appears in the guise of a pleasing man, with arched eyebrows and sharp cheekbones, lips narrow and tightly pressed. He may choose to step out of the illusion; however, he likes it this way -  _ clean _ ,  _ proper _ and  _ put-together _ .

In the tongue that is not a tongue, yet isn’t anything else, he says things; the things come out of his mouth and he shreds the wildflowers from their stems with a swipe of his arm. They start floating, as if cut off from gravity, and Death sneers at derision for his own actions.

This is not what death is, what death means. It is not the cultivation of levity, not the trickling chimes of a wooden tune, not the sinewy contours of a still beating heart.

Death is mere lack of energy, a void unfulfilled and inescapable. Just the thought of something like affection makes him want to  _ squeeze _ the Milky-way Galaxy in his hands.  _ Revolting _ ,  _ irking _ ,  _ tasteless _ \- the concept of  _ fondness _ .

He does not want this taking root between his innards. If it forces him to rip out the tendrils from his capillaries, he might just set fire to the universe in his rage.

“You  _ leech _ ,” he spits out to it, to the feeling. “You disgusting,  _ mortal _ sentiment. I will expel you from my blood, and you will cease to exist.  _ This _ , I promise.”

It did not flinch, nor did it tighten. It simply lived on within him.

It made him shiver, the taste of vomit showing signs on his tongue. He did not want this, did not want emotion. Could not. Would not.

Yet  _ love _ existed, and how  _ infuriating _ it was...

~(e.e)~

“ _ Other _ report,” Harry snaps when he starts recording. “Seems like the properties of vegetation A are inconsistent. Researcher Granger and I, Assistant Researcher Potter, have tried to find out the reason but failed partially. Yet it seems as  _ though _ ...” 

He pauses, probing the pollen-head with a wooden stick. It sneezes out a cloud of brilliant dust, gleaming in the dim air of the laboratory.

“... as though the vegetation  _ favors _ my presence.”

He doesn’t lower his eyes. Clicking shut the recorder, he puts it back in the drawer. He has to take his gaze away for a moment as he pulls the seat closer, then settles back again. 

A troubled, yet fascinated sheen in his irises. “ _ What are you...?” _

~{ΦωΦ}~ Με ΙΖ ζιηεβΓεΑΚ

In the scene of a shivering winter night, sky of blackout and streetlights with orange glows, burying the snow-covered world in a cozy cage - was the night Tom left the flesh womb of his mother.

Through the groans of her agony, and the pain of the baby’s extraction, she slipped away and passed on to the realm where nothing was. Doing so, she delivered to Tom the energy he needed to ingest, in order to step into the world of living.

Tom  _ ate _ her shade, and became more in the process. He sucked the imprint of her magic, and chewed up the tough meat of her life force like a small carnivore eating a  _ carcass _ , which its parents hunted.

And in the end, he flopped out of the bloody folds of her body, and screamed murder as he arrived.

\\{ÔεÔ}/ωοω δυcΗ ζιηεβΓεαΚ

In the orphanage’s birthing room, Tom was deemed strange, and shut away from the human babies.

He grew and grew, and as he did, the curious hunger in his stomach too -  _ stronger _ . The measly portions of the meals did nothing but escalate his appetite, and Tom never truly knew what he hungered for.

The matron came to him one day, bringing with her a new boy.

“This is Billy Stubbs,” she merely said. “He’s sleeping here from now on. Am I understood?”

“Crystal, Mrs Cole,” he answered and went back to his book.

She left them alone. As she exited, the door shut so hard behind her that Billy jumped in fright.

“I don’t want you to talk,” Tom ordered immediately. Staring the shaking boy down, “Don’t speak, don’t hum, don’t whisper - better yet, don’t even  _ breathe _ . And, if possible, leave the room.”

“But - But Mrs Cole said this is my room!”

“...Didn’t you hear me?” Tom asked with an appalled sourness. “ _ Don’t talk _ . Is that so hard? Should I  _ make _ you silent?”

Billy makes a sound of whimpering yelp, and stumbles out of the door in his hurry to escape. 

Tom sighs and leans back into the headboard. 

But despite his hopes of being left in peace, the incident occurs more than a million times. His rage grows quieter, but it becomes fiery. The emptiness in his stomach persists, and with the incentive of his anger, so does his grudge against the roommate.

Billy, after a visit to the nearby forest, comes back with a pet rabbit.

It is content to be left in the room, snuffling ever so slightly on the bookshelf. Tom eyes it with a calculative eye.

“Why not,” he muses to himself. His stomach rumbles. “It’s your fault. I told you to stop  _ breathing _ , Billy. You didn’t listen.”

He cradles the animal in his arms. The pace of his heart rivals that of the rabbit - _hard_, _fleeting_, _and_ _quick_. He feels the circulation of its hot blood, and the thumping of its veins. For a moment, he’s never felt so in sync, so conscious of another living being like this time. The trembling of its scared body passes on to his pulse.

Then it’s over. His face takes the curves of an excited smile, and he’s off to the back yard. He practically runs down the hallway - yet there’s no one to see the armful of rabbit he has on his person. 

In the garden, he finds a moss covered rock, all sharp edges and black surface, but hesitates.

The rabbit stares at him from his feet. It snuffles, and Tom finds himself mesmerized by the life in its eyes. He stares back at it.

It takes off and runs to the forest. He sprints after it with adrenaline in his system, lungs heaving fast and arms swinging wildly by his sides.

The woods are quiet, with only the melodies of songbirds remaining. There seems to be no fauna on its green soil, but Tom knows there exists a rabbit he seeks to  _ kill _ . So he scours,  _ hunts _ , and tracks - to no avail. The rabbit has eluded him, and has left with its life intact. 

Tom’s face is set in something malevolent, an ugly vengefulness. The hunger is as needy as ever, and the cramping of his insides reel him into the reality of his body. Should he go back to the orphanage, to receive food he knows won’t satiate this feeling? Should he look for the  _ rabbit? _

The sky is violet.

Out in the shrubs, he hears a vicious sound, and looks over to see. There he finds an elderly fox, graying within its fur, a mouthful of the rabbit red and bleeding in its maw.

It makes some victorious noises, hobbles, then falls over.

It doesn’t move, nor does its chest rise and fall, and he realizes,  _ pissed _ , that it’s very much  _ dead _ and done with.

With a huff, he walks and crouches over their shared corpses. His mind is anger-addled, much too clouded to find calmness.

“Was it a  _ joke? _ ” he asks. The forest is bereft of any sound. Petrichor leaks from the dead earth. “You were almost dead by the time you caught that bloody animal. What was the  _ point? _ ”

The corpse doesn’t answer him. Tom sneers and leaves for the orphanage.

~{>v<}~€ ζιηεβΓεαΚ!! £~[UvU]~

Billy Stubbs goes further than any other has in the endeavour of maddening Tom Riddle. Tom yearns to  _ gouge out his eyes _ and force them down his throat, choking on his own organs and dying in the clenching tunnel of a flesh tube, breath shallow and escaping. It leaves him  _ breathless  _ (if you would - such a terrible joke), saliva collecting at the idea.

Since that day he let  _ the rabbit _ slip through his fingers, into beyond the veil, he has become even more ruthless, more uncaring. The children fear him on sight and if not, they  _ learn _ to. Tom couldn’t be any happier!

Or so he thought.

Billy Stubbs, without fail, remained his only roommate. The matron refused to remove him, so Tom piped down and took the annoyance and let it simmer like a creamy,  _ delicious _ soup. It’s heavy, but it will be worth it in the end.

“Did you hear,  _ Tom?” _ Billy demands to know, standing before him with defiance in his eyes. “We’re leaving the orphanage tomorrow, you and I both. You can’t bully me out the room anymore, you  _ can’t.” _

Tom is content to gaze at him, his confusion visible. He laughs - it’s something unpleasant, Tom’s laughter. In his whole life no one liked it.

“I’m  _ serious _ , Tom,” Billy repeats as his stomach sinks to the bottom of his inside. “I want to sleep without you breathing down my neck. It’s about time you stopped being so - so -  _ childish!” _

Billy falls silent. Tom does too.

“I-” Billy swallows in his dry mouth. “I didn’t mean that.”

Tom simply looks at him. “Lying is bad for one’s health, I hear.”

“I didn’t!”

“Let’s take a walk outside, Billy-” Tom closes his book and stands up. “- and  _ calm down,  _ don’t you think so? We can talk like proper adults. Come now.”

/(OvO’’’)/ {{{{{{{{

He took the orange lights of his birth and planted them in the black soil of his mother’s soul. With Billy’s end, he prepared fertilizer for his garden. The orphanage did not hear from Tom Riddle or Billy Stubbs again, neither did they appear on the face of the Earth after that evening.

Billy was dead. Tom was something close to it.

***

He appeared in the dreams, watching from the sidelines -  _ quiet _ , never interrupting, yet so  _ utterly _ distracting to the senses. In the silence of the monotonous images and empty dialogues, Death was a bone-white beacon in a sea of imagery.

Harry’s heart pounded steadily, blood circulating through every crevice. He had enough control to lead his path to the entity’s way, and he did so with nervousness so unlike him.

Instead of the apathy he had been expecting, however, he met a sneer: “Are you daft? Go back to your fantasies, you idiot.”

So off-script, Harry could not produce anything to say, then recovered. 

“I - sorry. I wanted to see you,” he admitted with warmth suffusing his cheeks, no matter how non-physical they were.

“To  _ see? Me?” _

“Is that so surprising?” he snapped in his embarrassment. “You are just... so very  _ alluring _ , I couldn’t take my eyes off you. How could I go back to dreaming again?”

“I don’t know,” Death intoned, unimpressed. “I’m not familiar with human practices of lucid sleep, so you will have to figure it out yourself.”

Without further ado, he turned back and walked out of his peripheral vision before Harry could say,  _ ‘Wait _ . _ ’ _

***

The next time he visited, Harry had stood against the urge to collapse until four in the morning; so it was safe to assume he was exhausted enough to die.

“Leech,” Death greeted dispassionately. Nevertheless, he did not complain when Harry laid on his feet, bones aching. “I see you’re at the edge of shutting down. Are you finally ready to depart?”

“Why? Are you here to collect me?”

“ _ Touché _ ,” he said in reply, and settled on the grass beneath.

Harry took a look around, oddly disquieted at the sight of a hill of dead grass.

“Where is this?” he asked his companion. 

Death watched him with a calculative eye. The face he made was so hesitant, so  _ shy _ that Harry was tempted to comfort him.

“An orphanage’s back yard, in England. It seems to be Autumn’s early months, or August.” 

“Why are we here?”

“How would I know?” Death threw back. He seemed rather irritated at his questions. “I have no intentions to talk about your psyche, but perhaps I could recommend treatment?”

“Would you?”

“Yes,” he said with an amused twist of his lips. “I hear from my subjects that the afterlife’s atmosphere is… practically  _ soul-healing _ . How would you like a permanent position?”

Harry laughed, and was overjoyed to see the man’s smile -  _ soft _ , tentative. He felt  _ sunshines _ in his chest as he spotted it, realizing with a shudder that if the visits became habit, he was truly and well  _ fucked _ .

“I should take my leave,” Death told him, as if sensing his dread.

“I-“ Harry inhaled shallowly. “I’ll miss you.”

Death gazed at him, his confusion clear. “I come here everyday.”

“You only came twice, and besides, even a day is too much time apart.”

He huffed, a sort of derision in his next words, “Do you think yourself my  _ keeper _ , Harry? I would think a human of your...  _ self _ , would know better than to lay claim to a being of nothing. Where are your manners?”

He turned to fly off, but paused.

“If you come visit back, however,” he started. “I could consider an arrangement.”

***

Harry laid awake for days after, unable to fall asleep in his chaotic thoughts. To happen upon the afterlife  _ once _ \-  _ forget twice _ \- was near  _ suicide _ . But Death -  _ the one he liked so much, the one with blood like crystals and flesh without a layer of dirt _ \- had invited him inside. To decline would be to live a cursed life, especially as someone who had seen a scene so -  _ magnificent _ . Harry was not ready to part from his addiction.

But as he laid sober of sleep’s call, he could not even wink through the fear of his mortal shell, too frightened of what his soul desired. What was abjection but a resistance to the morals, a desperate refusal of the forbidden urges? Harry  _ wanted _ so deeply, but his mind wasn’t ready for a monstrosity of such value.

He collapsed again the next day, but Death did not come. Harry called for him with tears in his eyes, a painful gash in his heart. Death left his pleas unanswered, without relief, and Harry bled to his death until the end of his dream.

Hermione noticed his ailment, the crushed fragments of his insides, and attempted basic first aid in the form of, “Are you sure you have nothing to talk about? Are you sure Harry? Are you absolutely sure? Do you need more raw meat? I could procure some for you, I know afterlife has left you a bit  _ strange- _ “

“No,” Harry said. “I don’t want fucking meat. Stop talking about it, Hermione.”

“It could be argued that the refusal of the desired object is a form of reverse psychology,” she lectured with the sort of gracelessness that was unique to the Research Department. “Besides, you are having trouble with sleep, aren’t you? I can’t think of anything else that could have affected you.”

“Screw you,” Harry said. Hermione raised an eyebrow, so reminiscent of  _ him _ that Harry had to blink a moment. “Just - I’m tired. Really tired, okay? I need sleep.”

“So  _ sleep _ ,” she dared him. “ _ Oh _ , but you  _ can’t _ , can you? You need my help, Harry.  _ Please- _ “ She grabbed his hand. It was warm,  _ far _ too warm for Harry. “Tell me what you need.”

Harry stood in silence for minutes, for hours, but Hermione didn’t leave him. Then his head rose to meet her determined gaze, and he nodded.

“Okay.” Biting his lip, “I just need a knife.”

***

In hindsight, it had been downright moronic to attempt suicide. But what can you do? When your heart says,  _ ‘You have to apologize to him, kill yourself if you can’t sleep,’ _ you don’t wait and think. You go and kill yourself like a good boy. 

And, in hindsight, it was logical to expect to appear in the afterlife. Harry should have known better than to rely on _hindsight_, but old habits _die_ _hard_ \- like Harry. Had he also mentioned he had a shitty sense of humor?

“You’re on my borders,” Death told him as a faux greeting.

“Really? I thought it would have been enough to pass on.”

“Not really.” He glanced beyond Harry’s shoulder. “You were discovered. I hope you enjoy the scrutiny of a suspicious hospital staff, because you aren’t leaving for a long time after that.

“ _ Pray _ tell,” he started and Harry felt the beginnings of something unnervingly close to tears. “What were you thinking? Have you learnt nothing from your time in my realm?”

“ _ I _ ...”

Harry, at the moment, could not think of anything to justify his actions. Had he sought to gain the man’s  _ approval _ , somehow? By going to him willingly? That had to have been it. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said instead, trembling. “I couldn’t,  _ and _ ... I didn’t want you to think I  _ didn’t _ want to come, and I - and I just did it. I was too afraid to sleep. My mind wouldn’t let me.”

“So, instead, you deigned it  _ fitting _ to commit such an  _ atrocity? _ ” Death asked. Harry nodded. “What would your team say? What would your  _ parents _ say? Aren’t you concerned for yourself? Harry, there’s something quite not  _ right _ with you.”

“Pot, meet kettle.”

“Ah, I  _ did _ walk into that one.”

Then reigned silence between them, until the dream came to an end.

“Well,” Death told him. His back to Harry, about to flutter away from his fuzzy vision, like he always did. “Lucky me - I’m not quite  _ right _ in the head either. You know where to find me.”

Harry grinned, “To visit when I miss you?”

“Who knows. Maybe to know the address, should you have the urge to…  _ send _ a  _ message _ .”

With his cryptic lasting words, he disappeared from view, and Harry realized with a start that he was dreaming - so he woke up.

Right into his best friend’s pissed off face.

***

After the whole debacle was over with, Harry ruminated on his encounters with Death, trying to decipher his mysterious implication.

But when he saw the puffed up pollens of the meadow flower, glowing warm and lovingly in the dim laboratory, Harry  _ knew. _

“You sly fucker,” he laughed buoyantly, heart squeezing at the gesture - the sheer  _ manipulation  _ of that wretched, lovable asshole. “I’ll show you a  _ message. _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *blows kisses to all of you*


	3. I was dead and you told me to stand up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry can summarize his childhood in three words: Cotton, rain, and rosemary.

“Come on,” he snarled. Another gash, another spray of blood - the flowers drowned under the viscous liquid. “Come on!”

“Doing something again and again, despite knowing that it will fail; that is a sign of insanity, did you know?” Hermione piped up near the wall. “Whatever happened to you, Harry?”

“Shut up.”

Even so - _ Even so, _ the sheer layer of blood seemed iridescent on the white petals, dripping from the path of his right arm. 

Cupping his face against the overwhelming feelings, he slumped back into the seat. His hands left, but the blood smears stayed.

“The flowers had to wilt just after I understood,” he spoke out loud. He was shaking - rather poorly, but pathetic little shivers nonetheless. “They had to - They had to close the way. Is he angry at me? I just - I don’t know what he’s expecting from me!”

Hermione looked uncomfortable witnessing his breakdown, as mild as it was. “Perhaps we can reserve another research permission? The next one is a year later, but it’s possible. I can win against Malfoy’s department without a sweat.”

“No, I’m - I’m okay like this,” Harry refused as he stood back up. “I’m... I’m _ okay _. I’m all okay. This’ll pass too.”

“...Sure.” Hermione did not sound certain, but did not press. Glancing at his fresh wounds again, she muttered, “You should go have Pomfrey treat those, though. Wouldn’t want a repeat of last week, would we?”

***

Harry Potter did not always work for the Other Research Committee, but when he started to, he quickly realized what meant to be mortal.

It wasn’t just the lifeblood running through his veins, no. It wasn’t the intangible soul contained within flesh either.

It was the body and the magic infused to it, the mix and swirl of blood and amethyst arcane and slick flesh slipping free of the bones, waiting to be consumed by another being of great reverence. For Death, no one knew if the tradition of devouring was because of the magical power or the enjoyment of raw human meat. 

Harry remembers his life, growing up with something missing deep inside him. There’s a part of his soul that is forgotten, lost in the darkness of otherworldly forgetfulness. He has always felt incomplete.

He figured he would always be incomplete.

***

Cotton.

Harry’s mother used to make him blankets and coats, the warm and dusty smell of cotton suffusing his senses.

He loves the whites, the beiges, the rare instances where she used colors and patterns. He loves every design and every masterpiece. He collects them and whirls them up into a nest on his bed.

It’s warm. It’s peaceful. 

(It’s _ suffocating— _)

And he loves cotton. Harry loves cotton and the texture of prickly fabric. He loves the oranges and purples and reds and burgundies mixing together. He delights in the patterns of stars that make up patchworks on his precious blankets.

(And it’s _ disgusting—) _

And he loves sleeping under them, he loves crawling under them as if in a tunnel, he loves having adventures under the blankets — the blankets with cotton fabric and _ prickly texture and _ ** _human skin—_ **

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


...Harry loves Momma’s blankets.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


***

  
  
  
  


**It’s ** ** _cotton_ ** **, it’s ** ** _COTTON_ ** **, oh god ** ** _Harry_ ** ** it’s ** ** _COTTON—_ **

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**...it’s cotton.**

  
  
  


***

Rain.

  
  
  


Harry doesn’t like rain much. But he likes going out in the downpour. The downpour washes over him, cleaning the crevices where his clothes hide. He brings his hands to his face, then to the crown of his head, and pushes the hair back as though performing a sacred, unquestionable ritual.

The rain washes him, he washes the rain. He becomes the rain, he drinks the rain. He closes his eyes and sinks into the drops of rain.

Harry is a rain of many rains, when he does this. Harry is a strange child. He doesn’t quite like the rain as it should be liked. Rain is holy to him. He doesn’t need to like it.

Rain cleans and makes pure, it floods into him and purifies the filth inside out.

  
  


It’s the only way he can live with himself.

  
  
  


***

Rosemary.

The herb is his mother’s favorite.

  
  
  


“Harry,” she smiles as she calls. “Come help with dinner.”

  
  


He does as he’s told, a soft and similar smile on his face. He helps his mother bring out the pots, the kettles. She pats his head with a coo and gives him the ingredients for the broth to boil.

“You’re a big kid now, you can boil water in a kettle without hurting yourself,” she tells him gently.

Harry takes the kettle and plugs it in, fills it up with some water and pours the contents of the bag. The broth smells weird and oily at first, but becomes easier to stomach as it heats up. At some points, when the yellow bubbles begin to fizzle and pop on the surface, he thinks it doesn’t smell that bad.

His mommy prepares most of the meal by herself, cutting board and skillet ready on the counter. She is talented in the kitchen, bakes and cooks and seasons with mastery that doesn’t seem possible to achieve in one lifetime.

She finally oils the skillet and begins cooking. The smells are sizzling and hot, but tasty. He is reminded of colours of orange and purple and red and burgundy, but he is too mesmerized by the flame of the cooker.

“Harry?” his momma asks. “Could you bring the spices for me, sweetie?”

  
  


Harry does as he’s told, a smile on his face. He reaches the closet with a stool and brings out the jars. Lily kisses him on top of his head and hugs him, then returns to cooking. She takes out basil, pepper and salt — then sprinkles fresh and dry rosemary on it. It smells wonderful now. Harry can’t wait to eat dinner. Mommy smiles at him, he smiles back at her as bright as she does.

  
  
  
  


The dinner table is covered by a flower patterned tablecloth. Harry likes tracing the stems and leaves with his fingers, likes the deep green color of them. 

“Here you go,” His momma exclaims as she puts the plates and the skillet. She goes back to the pot and looks into the kettle. “Oh, well done, Harry! I knew you could.”

She comes back and pours the broth over dinner, making the smell of delicious oil and spices infuse the air.

“Ah,” she sighs as she inhaled the scent. “How wonderful. Bon appétit, my little sugar plum!”

Harry smiles at his mommy, and takes the fork.

He looks at the meat and smiles frozen at the sunken eye staring back at him, buried under fillets of trapezius and mountains of rosemary. He takes the razor sharp knife lying on the table and cuts a small piece, then brings it to his mouth. It smells overpoweringly of rosemary and mint and pepper and every sense-killing herb ever, so much and so overwhelming that he can’t even smell the meat underneath the fried plants anymore. This is how he likes his meat. This is how he eats. This is how he lives. His mama brings back home the meat and they cook and Momma smiles and she blows kisses and Harry eats his meat with a smile on his face.

  
  


Harry is smiling. It’s frozen. The meat is dead. The man is dead. His mama smiles too. The eye stares at him.

This is how he can eat it. This is the only way he can eat it. If he can’t taste it he won’t vomit. If he doesn’t vomit he won’t run. If he doesn’t run he won’t die.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Goodness ****_HELP_** **_HIM HE DOESN'T WANT TO DIE—!_**

***

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


It is years and years and years before Harry lets go of his demons and lives side by side with them.

  
  


It’s not so horrific anymore.

  
  


“Harry,” his mother smiles. He smiles back. His smile is a nice, warm smile. He doesn’t care anymore. “How’s work?”

“I was let go.”

“They fired you.”

Harry nods. He’s smiling. He’s resigned. “They did. I think I want to work at Other.”

  
  


His mother stares at him curiously, smile on her face. “Will you be happy there?”

“I will.”

She stares some more, then hugs him. Kisses his cheeks with wetness and silent sobs.

  
  


Harry is let go of. Harry is let go. His smile slips. He sighs and never smiles again.

  
  


***

  
  
  


When Harry is chosen for the New Afterlife Project, he knows there’s something strange brewing in the air.

“You are extremely qualified,” Kingsley praises him. “Of all workers, you might be the only one who has come so near death in long time periods. You are perfect.”

“Can’t they send Draco? I heard his father tried to kill him last summer.”

“Malfoy? You must be joking, Potter. Malfoy is a sniveling little coward who is too frightened for his own good. But you—“ He points at him. “—you are good. You will survive the trip. I have never seen anyone who can stay as long as _ you _ can near the gate. Five whole months, was it?”

It was. The gate tried to swallow him once. It knows better now.

“You are the man,” Kingsley repeats. “You are the one we have been looking for. Death awaits you, Potter. Death is your destiny.”

A hand is given to him to shake.

“Do you accept your destiny?”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Harry sighs and smiles.

  
  


***

  
  
  


**But Death isn’t how he imagined him — Death is ** ** _beautiful_ ** **, Death is precious, Death is everything at once. Harry forgets his mother when with him, forgets why doesn’t smile. And he smiles.**

**God. He ** ** _smiles_ ** **. He smiles so much. Death is so ** ** _lovely_ ** **. **

  
  
  
  
  


**Harry falls in love and he doesn’t climb back out.**

  
  


***

  
  


So he finds a way back to the afterlife.

  
  


Harry is a lovesick fool on a rampage — nothing can stand in his path, nothing can keep him away from Death. He who eats humans and creatures as if he inhales air, he who sings with magic and retches out such _ lovely _ red.

And Harry loves him. So Death wants to talk again? Harry will come. Harry will find a way, even if Death doesn’t want him.

Harry is in love. Harry is free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. I was planning this to be a three-shot but damn, I’m busy. So this will have much shorter chapters. Fourth one might be as long as this one. But I think fourth is the last, if I decide not to make an epilogue or something.


	4. but instead I dragged you to my bleeding heart.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _THE FINAL CHAPTER._
> 
> "An eternal agony just for us."

x

Death stands on a meadow of flowers and rethinks his decision.

Had he chosen wisely? Had he chosen the _ very best _he could have? His blood was singing in his veins, his heart threatened to step out and fly should he actually burn the field with a blaze of antimatter.

He brings up his hand, shaking so slightly -- like paper on wind. He snarls at the sight and ignores the stinging of his eyes.

He was stupid. For all his eternal knowledge and _ limitless power, _ he had all but one brain cell -- _ one brain cell dedicated solely to Harry Potter; _ to watch, to astonish at, to _ covet _ . Like _ flaming fever _, but monstrously insistent. 

He did see the secret beauty underneath the agony, however. This love had sharp edges and a serrated _bite_. No better than a feral beast, it clung to him with such ardor, such vigor! So _darling_, **_darling_** it was that Death -- who became _Tom_ for such _feeling_ could never belong to _Death_ \-- could not swipe away the shard pulling at his fraying threads.

This love _ killed. _ Love killed Death. _ Love killed him. _

X

Death was such a bitch.

Harry knew not how to navigate such a bitch’s heart, sadly. Death didn’t make sense. For Death, words were meaningless and actions seemed to mean even less - but Harry had a feeling that all this was part of the game, the plan. There was no rhyme or reason to Death’s actions - _ contradictory ones at that _ \- but Harry had this… awful _ feeling, _that this was exactly how it was meant to be.

Victory against adversity. Love in spite of loathing. Endless torment, endless emptiness. Eternal respite and eternal gorging. Unidentifiable and grasping - holding onto everything yet attached by nothing.

It was probably too much to hope that Death wouldn’t live up to his traits, wasn’t it? Harry had hoped that this would have been easier, but - tough luck. He had been shot through the heart on his _ very first trip _ to the afterlife, so he was metaphorically fucked (and if he was lucky, _ not so metaphorically). _

Harry had theorized that the flowers could be part of the cryptic riddle, but they had lost their shine the moment he had had an idea. Was that the infamous, shockingly annoying, amazingly bastard nature of Death? _ Well, _Harry was all for it. 

That incredible bitch.

He was coming through and into the afterlife.

X

The flowers seemed to glow up the closer they got to the gateway.

Harry conducted a few experiments with Hermione’s help, provided that she stayed a bit further away from the gate. As Harry was the best of the employees who could bear the brunt of such a force, he was the one who actually did the manual labor, while Hermione stood behind the reinforced crystal and wrote down his observations.

_ Focus, _ he told himself. _ He is waiting. _

He took the flowers, compared them to the shade of energy on the gate, and then he knew the way - Harry had forgotten one important aspect: _ Death was commitment. _There was no way to turn away from Death, no way to go back to how you were. Once touched, one would always feel the chill of emptiness inside.

Harry knew that his _ prolific _ past was a reason for his affinity, but he had always known that something had been at the edge of his consciousness. There was more to him than his familiarity with the concept, _ more than what remained buried. _Harry was the sum of all of his mother’s sinful deeds and all of his desperation to escape it - added on was an otherworldly desire for nothing, the desire for something that didn’t exist where he could see it.

Harry had known what he had wanted all his life.

_ It lay in the darkness. _

Somewhere distant, the black hole cackled at him.

X

Harry, in his infinite wisdom, jumps into the black hole without ever considering the risks - _ without ever thinking of getting back. _

_ Hermione would have slapped me, _he remembers, but she is just a long-lost dream.

The black hole is a blackness that swallows him at first, like a monstrous, colossal mouth and throat that swallows him down the gullet, and for a second everything’s _ pressure, void, vacuum, dark matter and atom spins and just slight warmth, _ and then it all snaps back and he is screaming in a vortex of _ lights, voices, too much matter in too little space, flashes of color and mostly white and then the floods of photons- _

And Harry is spewed out in blood and viscera, choked out of a mouth made of darkness and energy.

He stumbles away as a shimmering, glittering soul - he can’t feel his arms or legs or anything really, but he feels eternal in a way he hadn’t felt in- _ no time. _He had never felt like this before. It feels simultaneously as if he is in his own cocoon and as if he is too large to exist by himself.

_ “Harry?” _ he hears, whispered with an awful, _ awful _ rasp. Harry knows who had spewed him to existence then. He turns around - _ around? _\- and he is face to face with Death’s magnificence, his sheer presence.

Death is as lovely as the first day Harry saw him.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Death tells him, looking sick and looking weak with confusion. “I _ chased you out.” _

“You left me a way in,” Harry corrected. He approached him, in a spiritual way that meant that _ his soul got intertwined with the other, _and Death took a step back.

“No.”

“Yes,” Harry said, tired now. “You wanted me to chase you so you left me a trail to follow.”

“Of breadcrumbs? Tell me, am I Hansel or Gretel?”

“You are _ neither. _ For _ murder’s sake, _let’s talk.”

Death looks so _ delightfully _befuddled now, as if even his own actions are nonsensical to him. Which, if Harry had to choose, was better than him actually abandoning Harry to a lifetime of loneliness, touched by death yet unclaimed by it. 

The tall, enshrouded entity leads them to a misty, darkened meadow - it’s that first Harry had gone in to collect his flowers. The earth is black as night and the flowers glow like torches in the sea, ships lit on lantern lights and floating above the grumbling waves. The silence is _ compressing, _ but it has so _ sweetly _materialized that Harry doesn’t care it’s a silence at all.

“I saw you in the field of flowers,” Death spoke, forlorn. “I saw you sitting here, among the dead grass, and I thought you were beautiful. Untouched.”

“I think I thought the same,” Harry said. “I was shocked. My heart couldn’t take you, my head never stopped spinning. So I fell in love instead.”

When Harry glanced under Death’s hood, he saw a smile just for him.

_ He looks pretty, _Harry thinks, but it’s a juvenile thought.

“I thought love was stealing souls,” Death continued. “I grew up in an orphanage, as an immortal soul captured within a mortal womb. My soul was stolen, and I devoured my mother’s soul in childbirth to live enough to _ manifest _ mine. In my last years, I chased a boy through the forest and _ ate him down to his bones.” _

“I can imagine it,” Harry said, voice shaking. Death looked over at him. “I can _ feel it. _ He was so _ afraid.” _

“So lonely,” Death added, his smile widening. “Poor Billy Stubbs - he never took my advice to just _ stop breathing. _I watched as the light sank into the darkness of his eyes.”

“He just _ wasn’t there anymore,” _ Harry continued from there. _ Never _ had he known such exhilaration, such awe. “So _ where had he gone?” _

“To the land that isn’t. To the collective and the singular, the one that will always and never be. Harry-” Death’s breath hitched, and he gave a trickling sigh. _ “Harry. _Come to me.”

“Why-”

“Just do. Do it anyway.”

Harry walked to the other, eyes never straying from him. He extended his lone hand, and swept away the hood from Death’s head. The face welcoming was a _ revelation. _

Death had eyes like the depths of a forest, like the bark of a tree shriveling. He was pale and his lips were bloodied by the gore.

He was gorgeous, and Harry wanted to touch his cheeks, wipe the red from his mouth.

“I watched you in your dreams,” Death explained. God, the _ movement of his lips _was tempting enough. “I had wondered often, whether sating my craving would uproot the leech in my heart.”

Harry swallowed. “Did it?”

Death opened his mouth, swirled his tongue over his teeth - Harry couldn’t stop looking - and brought with his tongue a _ brilliant energy, too bright to look at and too warm to be a void. _As soon as it was there, it was gone. “No.”

Lunging at him, Death kissed the breath out of him, drank the soul out of him and _ killed him a second time. _Harry was clinging to him with his last strength, unable to let go. Tears of joy gathered at the rims of his eyes.

The life slid back into him then, immediately after. Death gave him his soul back, all in a breath, and Harry was alive again with the sheer contradiction.

_ Breathing, _ Death’s eyes told him. _ It’s merely the exchange of life, darling. Breathe me in, breathe me out. _

Harry clutched at his iridescent cloak, desperate to not let go - _to breathe. _Their lips pressed back and forth, when Death separated them for a moment and lay his forehead against Harry’s.

“I was dead,” Harry told him, heart aflutter. “But you saved me.”

“Hardly,” Death answered. “I dragged you down to my bleeding heart. Our forever agony, a sentence to serve until one of us crumbles.”

“And if we don’t?”

Death smiles, and it’s so _ darling, _just like everything he is. “Then it’s an eternity of sweetness.”

_ And how they dreamed... _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS FINALLY FINISHED OMG  
THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR THE WAIT YOU'RE SO LOVELY


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